Houston clothes and earrings already up for auction

Whitney Houston has barely been dead a week, and already several of her belongings - including a pair of earrings and a vest that she wore in the 1992 movie The Bodyguard - will go on the auction block next month.

The items, which celebrity auctioneer Darren Julien obtained following the singer's Feb. 11 death, will be included in the Hollywood Legends auction, which will be held at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills on March 31 and April 1.

Also among the Houston items that will go on the auction block: Several dresses, including a floor-length, black velvet dress (pictured) owned by the singer and valued at $1,000-$2,000. (The vest and faux-pearl earrings that Houston wore in her breakthrough film The Bodyguard are valued at $400-600 and $600-$800, respectively.

The Hollywood Legends auction will also include memorabilia such as Charlie Chaplin's cane, the jacket that Clark Gable wore in Gone With the Wind, and the staff that Charlton Heston used in the 1956 epic The Ten Commandments.

Julien dismisses the notion that it might be a little too soon to put Houston's belongings up for auction.

"It's a celebration of her life," the auctioneer told the Associated Press. "If you hide these things in fear that you're going to offend someone – her life is to be celebrated. These items are historic now that she passed. They become a part of history. They should be in museums."

Houston died at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills on Feb. 11, prior to Clive Davis' annual pre-Grammys party. The singer was found submerged in her bathtub by a member of her personal staff, and emergency responders were unable to revive her. Houston was 48.

The singer was buried in at the Fairview Cemetery in Westfield, N.J. - next to her father, who died in 2003 - on Sunday. On Saturday, an invitation-only funeral service for Houston at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J. - which Houston attended and sang at as a child - included tributes from Kevin Costner, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, Houston's producer Clive Davis and others.

A cause of death has not yet been announced, pending the results of a toxicology test.

Source: Reuters